The UKs five main mobile networks are collaborating on a nationwide Find My Builder scheme that would enable consumers to track down the position of builders nationwide by a system of triangulation, using the networks radio masts.
The move is in response to intense lobbying from the pressure group, the National Association of Homeowners (NAH) who are said to be fed up with the antics of tradesmen who routinely start a project and then disappear for days or weeks on end halfway through, claiming sickness or some problem that needs to be sorted out at home. According to NAH spokesman Rex Tenshun, over 350,000 man days are lost through such antics each year, costing the British economy hundred of millions of pounds. He told Mobile Marketing Magazine.
Builders have got away with this sort of behaviour for far too long. They all have mobile phones, so this seems to us the perfect solution. If someone can use this service to prove that their builder is in the pub, when they should be finishing a job, a lot of people will say thats a good thing.
But not everyone is as enthusiastic about the idea. Arthur Shandy, Chairman of  the National Association of Pub and Restaurant Managers, believes such a move would be a huge infringement of civil liberties. He says:
Such a scheme would hit our members takings without a doubt, but it would have to be opt in, and no builder with half a brain would do it. Where a builder goes at 3 oclock in the afternoon is nobodys business but his.
The scheme is currently scheduled to launch exactly one year from today.